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Doc puffed out rapidly: "I don&039;t care how near we are to the gate, I got to rest" He lowered his corner of the cot to the sand and knelt there, ar

"Your evil life catching up with you," Hunter jeered lightly, then oat He nore"

"I can take over again," eagerly volunteered the one who had had Doc&039;s corner earlier - a thin-faced high school student who had ridden to the symposium from Oxnard with Wojtowicz

"Better we all have a breather, Harry," the latter said "Professor - " He addressed himself to Hunter "It looks to ain Like back to normal"

All of them except the fat woman studied the situation in the western sky Even Doc raised his head while continuing to gasp Unquestionably the black isthmus between the Wanderer and thethe last shortsreed He squatted on his hae dog&039;s black-and-brown throat while he squinted upward "And - I know this is utterly fantastic - but it looks toa little fro from side to side Maybe it&039;s just eyestrain, but I&039;ll swear thepointing at the new planet"

"Yes," Ann told hioing from the top of the moon to the bottom"

"Line?" the Little Man asked

"Yes, like a crack," Ann told hiht It comes to pass as I foretold Ispan-Serpent fecundates and the White Virgin gives birth

"I must confess I don&039;t see that," the Little Man said

"You&039;ve got to look very close," Ann told him

"I&039;ll take your word for it," Wojtowicz said "Kids got sharp eyes"

Doc gasped excitedly, "If there&039;s a crack up there that any of us can see, it must beout the words, "I think theinto orbit around the new planetand way inside Roche&039;s limit" He added swiftly, "Rudy, do solid satellites break up like liquid ones inside Roche&039;s limit?"

"I don&039;t think anybody really knows," Doc answered

"They&039;re going to find out," the beardedto find out what ants feel like when someone steps on their nest"

Wojtowicz said: "The o clutched Paul "Don!" she cried "Oh otten Don!"

The Wanderer first appeared twenty-five thousand miles away from theor tide-producing effects on the reater than those the Earth exerts on Luna, since such effects vary inversely with the cube of the distance between bodies (If they varied inversely only as the square, the reater than the hed tidewise by that small body eleven to five)

When Luna went into orbit around the Wanderer at a distance of twenty-five hundred miles, she was a hundred tily, her whole body, crust and core, was being wrenched by a gravitational grip one a&039;s spacescreen inging up toward Earth when the gentle buainst the walls of the cabin finally awoke Don Merria across the inside of the spacescreen He woke clearheaded and ready for action, refreshed by the extra oxy Two yanks and a wriggle got him into the pilot&039;s seat He strapped down

Whiteelse, ca Then ca down, interminably it seemed, toward the ulf, bisected along its jet length by a gleaht yelloard one end Then another glittering and inter down sheer toward Luna&039;s very center

His eyes told Don he was no more than fifteentoward it at about a h ti to cancel the hts flashed, Don&039;s fingers flicked the keys of the vernier jets, halting the Baba Yaga&039;s slow tu so that the spacescreen - and Don - looked straight down the chas of colors There had been so with tremendous brilliance behind thein the blackness of the h the moon

The moon, split like a pebble? Planetary cores should flow, not fracture But any other theory meant death

The walls of fresh-riven rock rushed up at hihthand one A baby solid-fuel rocket fired on that side set the Baba Yaga drifting away fro which another ripple of the verniers neutralized almost before it manifested itself

When he was a boy, Don Merriahs In that roreatest swordsman of two planets, had escaped with his comrades from the vast, volcanic, subterranean cavern-world of the Black Pirates of Barsoo a Martian flyer straight up theto the outer world, instead of rising slowly and cautiously by the buoyancy of the flyer&039;s ray tanks The latter had been the normal and only sane course, but John Carter had found salvation for hi vertically for a star visible at the top of the well-like shaft

Perhaps the Gods of Mars were the arbiters of all Don Merriam&039;s actions at this point At any rate, he suddenly felt around hihostly presences, in their jeweled harness, of Xodar the Black renegade, Carthoris thethe sinister Father of Holy Therns, and his brave, beautiful, love-struck, infinitely treacherous daughter Phaidor And it is a fact that as the pluulfed between blurs of raw rock touched by sunlight for the first time in billions of years, and as Don fired the G-rich ainst his seat, where he steered by the verniers and the solid-fuel rockets to keep the glitter of the rock walls equal and the violet-and-yellow thread splitting the black ribbon into equal halves, he cried out sharply in the eht down the chasive way to a stretch of adobe-hard earth sloping sharply up to the highTwo But here - seaward of the point where the blinking red light sat atop its mast a hundred feet behind the fence - and two hundred feet, at least, above it - a broad gully cut through the ridge, gentling the slope Tire and caterpillar tracks ran up the gully There was a big gate in the fence where it crossed the road, and beside the gate, built like it into the fence, a two-story guard tower The gate was closed and the toas lightless, but the sht cheered Paul considerably He straightened his shoulders and his necktie The little cortege halted fifty feet in front of the gate and he, Margo, and Doc walked forward, preceded by their inky, purple-and-yellow-edged shadows

A brazen , "Stop where you are You are about to trespass on restricted property of the United States Governate Return the way you came Thank you"

"Oh,relieved of cot-lugging by young Harry McHeath, he&039;d got his bounce back "Do you think we&039;re an advance deputation of little green men?" he shouted at the box "Can&039;t you see we&039;re hus?"

Paul touched Doc&039;s arm and shook his head, but continued to advance He called out in a bolt, 929-CW, JR, accredited PR captain-equivalent of Project Moon I a admission for myself and eleven distressed persons known totransport for the latter"

A soldier stepped froht of the Wanderer There was nohe was a soldier, for he had boots on his feet and a hel frohtly harnessed to his back - Paul noted incredulously - were jump rockets

The soldier was pokerfaced and he stood stiffly, but his right knee was jouncing up and down a little, rapidly and steadily, as if he were about to go into a sta to control a tic and not succeeding

"CW and JR, eh?" he said to Paul, suspiciously but also respectfully "Let&039;s see your ID cardssir"

There was a faint, acid odor Miaoho had been reo&039;s arht at the soldier, and hissed like a teakettle

Handing the soldier the cards, which he had ready, Paul caught a sharp tre theht, his face stayed expressionless, but Doc noticed that his eyes kept ju away from the cards to the Wanderer